


beyond the sky

by polkadot



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Alternate Universe - No WAGs, Coming Out, Found Families, M/M, POV Outsider, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-17 18:17:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11856990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polkadot/pseuds/polkadot
Summary: "It’s not really a White House thing."“Not a White House thing,” Toby repeated. Did he even want to know? “You’re the White House Chief of Staff. How do you need a statement that isn’t really a White House thing?”“Well,” Josh said. “It’s… personal."





	beyond the sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [speakingwosound (sev313)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sev313/gifts).



**i. Toby**

It wasn’t every day that the President’s Chief of Staff called him, so Toby Ziegler took a moment to enjoy it, standing in his kitchen drinking his coffee.

“You still there?” Josh asked, as impatient as ever.

“Yeah,” Toby said, and set his mug down. The coffee was cold anyway. Perils of making a brew and then getting caught up in grading, scratching red-penned comments down callow, earnest undergrad essays. C.J. had given him an insulated mug, but he never seemed to be able to remember to use it; or at least that’s what he told himself. Maybe he just liked his old chipped Bartlet for America mug more. It had history. “What do you need, Josh? A secret plan to fight inflation?”

“Ha ha ha,” Josh said. “That’s like, fourteen years ago now. Though if Annabeth did get a root canal, no way I’d brief the press for her. Journalists are feral cats. They bite.”

Toby leaned back against his sink and tried to be patient. “Is this going to be a guessing game? Because I have sixty freshman papers to grade, and I’m pretty sure only half of them understand the First Amendment properly. And these days half is good.”

“Right, sorry,” Josh said. He hesitated, and then it all came out in a rush. Typical Josh. “So we need to put out this statement, okay, and I thought about it, and I decided I wanted the best writer I know to write it.”

“Will or Sam?” Toby asked, with mild interest.

Josh made an exasperated sound. “Don’t be silly. It’s you. Of course.”

Toby’s mouth tightened. Seven years into the Santos Administration, eight since he’d been ran out of Washington on a rail. Limited contact with most of the old brigade since then, particularly the ones who stayed in government and didn’t retire to greener pastures like C.J. and Margaret. (Not that he blamed them, not that they could have been expected to maintain a close relationship with a pardoned felon – the rightwing press would have gleefully leaped to skewer them. And Leo’s death had shook them all; Leo had in many ways been the glue holding them all together.)

Yet despite the distance that had grown between them over the years, let Josh say one thing like that – with that certainty in his voice, as if it was only obvious – and Toby felt it all come roaring back. It was a bit annoying, that was what it was. He owed them nothing. 

“Last I checked, the White House _has_ speechwriters, Josh,” he said, his voice dry. “Some of them can even string two words together. Did you fire them all?”

“They’re not you,” Josh said.

Toby was not getting sucked back into this. He was detoxed from Washington politics. He had a tweed jacket, tenure, and a well-cultivated reputation for acerbity leavened with wit. He had learned how to bake, and ran half-marathons, and had a flatulent elderly cat. His only connection with the Washington political scene these days was the time-honored classic of yelling at the television.

“And it’s not really a White House thing,” Josh added.

“Not a White House thing,” Toby repeated. Did he even want to know? “You’re the White House Chief of Staff. How do you need a statement that isn’t really a White House thing?”

“Well,” Josh said. “It’s… personal. But it concerns the White House. But we can’t use White House speechwriters, or maybe we could, but I don’t want to. I want you.”

“Damn. All these years in government and you’ve finally lost your ability to speak coherently.”

Josh sighed, a volcanic sound over the phone. “Shut up. Will you do it?”

“I don’t even know what you’re asking me to do yet,” Toby said, and used his shoulder to hold the phone to his ear as he started making a new pot of coffee. He had the feeling he was going to need it.

“I’m getting married,” Josh said.

This was so unexpected that Toby dropped the coffee pot in the sink, causing an almighty clatter and making the cat yowl and race down the hallway. Luckily he didn’t drop the phone as well. “What?”

“Is it that surprising?” Josh said. Toby could hear the grin in his voice.

“I’m always surprised when anyone manages to stay in a relationship in Washington,” Toby said. “It’s the place where love goes to die, strangled slowly by 20-hour work days, constant existential stress, and the slow drip-drip of the news cycle.”

“Poetic.”

“I didn’t even know you were dating anyone,” Toby said. He remembered the days when Amy was around – nearly walking in on them in Josh’s office had a way of impressing itself on the memory – but that had been years and years ago. “I thought you were married to your job and sleeping in your office.”

Josh laughed. “Well, it’s true. I’m getting married.”

“Congratulations,” Toby said, belatedly remembering that it was required.

“Thanks,” Josh said. “Will you help me write the statement? I didn’t get any sleep last night and all I have are ten words. A sucky ten words.”

Toby tilted his head to one side, looking out through the kitchen window at his rhododendrons. “Why do you need a statement? Your love life isn’t Taylor Swift's. Nobody’s going to care except your friends, unless it’s an exceptionally slow news day.” Not that any day was an exceptionally slow news day nowadays, not with the Republican buffoons currently running for President. Somehow they’d found worse candidates than Robert Ritchie, and that was saying something.

“Well,” Josh said, then paused. “The Supreme Court ruling last month had something to do with it.”

Supreme Court ruling, Supreme Court ruling… he wasn’t talking about eminent domain, or offensive trademarks, or …

“Wait,” Toby said, as things suddenly slotted into place. “Are you telling me that you’re marrying a _guy_?”

“Surprise,” Josh said, his voice light, but Toby could still hear the nerves. “Yeah.”

“Congratulations,” Toby said, less by rote this time. 

“Still think the press won’t be interested?”

Santos’s Chief of Staff was not only gay, but getting gay married? Announcing it a month after it became legal? During an election campaign in which all fifteen of the candidates in the Republican primaries were running on pledges to ‘protect traditional marriage’, even if it took a constitutional amendment? 

“Yeah, they’ll be interested,” Toby said. He mentally shunted his grading down the priority list. The undergrads could wait a week for the bountiful benefit of his critiques. “Send me what you have already and I’ll take a look at it. You won’t need anything flowery. Just something simple – Josh Lyman, Chief of Staff, announces his engagement to Blah Blahson. Are you planning to do a sit-down with a tame reporter? I can call Danny.”

“It’s… slightly more complicated than that,” Josh said.

This was like pulling teeth, or getting a Congressman to go on record about reforming Social Security. “Are you marrying a Russian KGB agent? Brad Pitt?” A horrible thought occurred to him. “A Republican?”

“About as far from a Republican as you can get,” Josh said. 

Toby wrinkled his nose. “A communist? Please say you’re not marrying a communist.”

“I’m marrying Matt,” Josh said.

Toby flipped through his mental rolodex. “Matthew Perry? Matt Kemp? Matthew McConaughey is out of your league – wait, is it Matt from Justice, I remember there being a Matt in Justice –”

“The _President_ ,” Josh said.

Toby snorted. “Very funny.”

“I’m serious.”

And suddenly, terrifyingly, Toby believed him.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.

He was going to need a lot of pots of coffee.

~

**ii. C.J.**

Just walking through security, even if it was on a visitor’s pass, made C.J.’s heart race. She’d become so used to it by the end, so caught up in the daily minutiae of running the country that she hadn’t spared a thought for her surroundings. Now, looking at the White House through unhabituated eyes, she felt a rush of nostalgia and affection.

“Still keeping everything in order?” she asked Annabeth, who had come to shepherd them personally through the august corridors. C.J. would have felt flattered by the courtesy, if she hadn’t known that Annabeth was probably having kittens trying to contain the knowledge of Operation Hail to the Grooms. C.J. and Danny were being supervised, not honored.

Annabeth’s smile was all politeness, though. Nobody stayed Press Secretary for three years without knowing how to do their job exceptionally well. “We manage,” she said. “The primaries are taking a lot of the attention these days.”

 _Well, that was about to change_. C.J. met Danny’s eye and tried to look innocent. 

Technically she should have told him, she supposed. Even though it wouldn’t have just been telling her partner, it would have been telling the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who shared a brain with him, she was sure he wouldn’t have leaked it (and not just because leaking it would ruin his chance at an exclusive interview). But not telling him meant that she would get to watch his face when Josh and the President told him, and that was going to be _so much more fun_.

“So what is this story that’s so important that you got both me and C.J. out all the way from California?” Danny asked, as Annabeth whisked them through the West Wing. 

Annabeth was saved from answering by Donna, who came barreling out of her office to sweep C.J. into a hug. “You made it!”

“We did!” C.J. said, smiling, and stood back to look at her. “Well, you must be about to pop. Did you cave and find out if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“Cliff thinks it’s a girl, but we’re sticking to our guns and letting it be a surprise,” Donna said, resting a hand on her bump. “Still have two months to go, though. Luckily they’re doing this now and not in six weeks!”

“Can’t have the Communications Director out at a time like this,” C.J. agreed, and could virtually see Danny’s ears perking up. “We’ll catch up later. Dinner sometime this week?”

Donna nodded, then inclined her head towards Danny. “Does he know yet?”

“I’m beginning to think there’s a conspiracy to keep me in the dark,” Danny said. “You aren’t hiding any suspiciously-deleted tape recordings, are you? Or the Vice President having an affair?”

Donna patted his cheek fondly. “I’d like to come with you to the Oval,” she said to C.J., “but there’s a situation with the Ways and Means Committee, and I have to handle it. You go on – don’t keep them waiting!”

As they kept walking, through the ordinary bustle of the West Wing (behind them, Donna had started to direct her assistant Grace to get her Will Bailey, very quickly now), C.J. smiled at Danny. “You’ve gone all reporter-mode. Your nostrils are flaring at the scent of a story.”

He grinned back at her. “You love it.”

“If you’ll just wait here,” Annabeth said, “I’ll go in and see if they’re ready for you.” 

She opened the door of the Oval and slipped inside, leaving them with Ronna, who looked up with a bright welcome. “It won’t be more than a minute,” she said, glancing down at the schedule on her desk. “You’re in luck – we’re running on time today, because Senator Swain has the flu and had to postpone his meeting.”

“How is Josh doing?” C.J. asked, in a confidential undertone.

Ronna tried to keep her face straight, but there was a twinkle in her eye. “Oh, pulling his hair out. What’s left of it. But he’ll be all right. He’s been better since Toby got here yesterday.”

“Good,” C.J. said, and then Annabeth was opening the door and beckoning them in.

Josh did look quite frazzled, she thought, as she spotted him pacing back and forth across the rug. Toby was over by the desk with the President, going over a printout with a red pen. “You could punch it up,” he was saying, “but only if you want to spit on the Republicans as well as declaring war on them.”

“I don’t think the forcefulness of my language is going to be the thing that pisses them off the most,” the President said, raising an eyebrow. He looked amused, and far calmer than Josh. But C.J. would have expected that, and not just because the gravity of his office centered him. Santos had always been calm, almost shading into smug at times. He was a man who was firm in both his convictions and his daily life.

“Mr. President,” she said, as he looked up and met her eye.

“C.J.!” Santos said, breaking into a smile. “Welcome back to Washington. I suppose it would be impossible to persuade you to come back on board? I need a new Chief of Staff.”

“Can’t do it, sir,” C.J. said, shaking her head but returning the smile. “Two kids in school, and they’d cry if I took them away from their friends. Plus I like California weather better.”

Danny had gone all stiff and alert next to her. “Is Josh leaving? Is that what’s happening? Are you resigning to run a campaign?”

“It’s a thought,” Josh said. “Why not start all over again and get myself involved in a third Administration in a row? Fuck, even my kidney stones would have kidney stones.”

“Josh is not running a campaign,” Santos said, leaning back in his chair. “But he is indeed leaving.”

Josh made a face. “Not _leaving_. And I don’t see why I can’t –”

“Because if you stayed, there would be countless nepotism stories, and not just at Fox News,” Toby said. “I’d like the Republicans to continue devouring themselves and not find a common enemy just yet.”

“Nepotism?” Danny asked.

Santos was smiling again as he leaned his head back on his chair, looking at Josh. His eyes were soft. Watching the way they looked at each other, the way Josh’s shoulders eased, C.J. wondered how she had never seen it before. She surely would have if she’d still been working in the White House, not just keeping in touch from a distance and getting together for dinner whenever she happened to be in town. How _had_ they kept it a secret all these years, if they looked at each other like _that_?!

“Danny,” Santos said, and reached out his hand to Josh, who swallowed and came to take it, “Josh and I are getting married.”

Danny’s face was just as epic as C.J. had anticipated. She watched various expletives flash through his eyes – she could hear him thinking, _just because Josh can swear in the Oval doesn’t mean I can_ \- and when he spoke his voice was only slightly strangled. “Congratulations.”

Toby pointed the pen at him. “The President will be giving a statement tomorrow, but you get the exclusive interview to drop with it. Only if you say what I want you to say, though.”

“Fine,” Danny said, ever the pragmatist. “Within reason. Nobody ghostwrites me.”

C.J. left him to hash it out with Toby and Santos, and went to pull Josh aside for a hug. “Congratulations,” she said into his ear. “Though I should really be reading you the riot act. All these years, you’ve been sleeping with the President, and you never _told me_? I would’ve told you if I’d been sleeping with President Bartlet.”

“Ew,” Josh said. “Please never say anything like that again.”

“Does he know?”

Josh nodded. “We talked to him when he was in town for the state dinner last week. I didn’t want to get married until after we left office if President Bartlet thought it would be a distraction from our work. Matt didn’t think it would, but I wanted a third opinion.”

“Wilson got married while he was President,” C.J. said. “So did Grover Cleveland, that old lecher. If Grover could marry his own 21-year-old ward he’d known since infancy, you two are completely fine.”

“Well, President Bartlet thought so too. We have his blessing. He even offered to perform the ceremony if we wanted, but we decided against it. He’s going to be in the wedding party, though. That has to be a first, one President in the wedding party of another.”

“I’m sure it is, though I’m not a presidential historian,” C.J. said. She couldn’t seem to stop smiling. Unexpected as this development was, to see Josh so happy was a wonderful thing. The lines in his face had softened, and his eyes sparkled. “I have to say, I’m surprised I didn’t spot this before. Have you always looked at him like he’s a gigantic jelly donut?”

“Probably,” Josh said. “I suppose people mistook it for a lust for power.”

~

**iii. Donna**

“You ready?” Donna asked Josh, brushing down the lapels of his suit out of long habit.

“Ready to grab Matt and elope to the courthouse,” Josh said. He was clasping his hands together tightly enough to turn the knuckles white. “Long engagements are overrated.”

“You’ll be fine,” Donna said. “The President’s the one making the statement anyway. You just have to stand there and look handsome and like somebody the most dashing and powerful bachelor in the entire world would want to marry.”

“I’m doomed,” Josh said, gloomily.

She kissed his cheek. “Go get ‘em, tiger.”

Later, after the President’s statement was over and the Rose Garden had descended into frenzied shouts from the press, it would be her and Annabeth working through the day and into the evening to manage the aftermath of the story. Donna was glad to have Toby and C.J. back to help out; though of course she was an efficient and capable Communications Director in the normal order of things, this was certainly not the normal order of things. Having extra pairs of experienced hands around would be a great help.

Meanwhile, Donna watched the President and Josh, and couldn’t help smiling. She’d known from the beginning, of course. Even if she _hadn’t_ walked in on them kissing in the Residence that one time, she knew Josh. All those years working together hadn’t just made them best friends for life, it had given her a complete guide to Joshua Lyman. He was an open book to her, and every page of that book had been screaming Matthew Santos for a long time now. It was all well and good for everyone else to think that Josh left the Bartlet White House to run Santos’s campaign because he believed in Santos’s principles and potential, but that was only part of it. He’d been smitten.

“What a day,” Sam said, at her elbow. “Can you believe they’re doing it now? They’ve kept the secret so long, I thought they’d wait until after Inauguration.”

Donna considered that. “It’s important to the President,” she said. “He’s a romantic. He wants a White House wedding. And he’s also an idealist – the Supreme Court ruling gave him the opportunity to put Democrats on the right side of the issue for good, in one fell swoop. No Democrat’s going to be able to oppose equal marriage after this, not with as high as his polls are.”

“Maybe not so high after this.”

It was possible. The Supreme Court had been perhaps a little in advance of the country; support for equal marriage was certainly on the rise – young people these days didn’t give a crap – but it might have been easier in another couple of years. Finding out that the President was gay might push public opinion either way. Donna would have put Joey Lucas on polling, but this had all developed so suddenly that there hadn’t been the time. (And the polling would have been irrelevant either way. Matt Santos was not a President who let polls dictate to him on any issue, let alone this.)

Donna was an optimist, though, despite the best efforts of Washington to drive it out of her. How could anyone look at the President’s glowing face and at Josh’s quiet happiness and not want the best for them? America already liked the President – they’d reelected him in a landslide and his numbers were still quite high. They were less sure on Josh, his intense, sweary right-hand man who was known to fuck people up if necessary, but Josh looked harmless today. Love would do that to you.

“I think it’ll be fine,” Donna said, leaning on Sam’s arm as they followed the President and Josh into the Rose Garden. “Look at them. America will love them.”

The TV cameras bore down on them, and she kept a pleasant look on her face, in case any were pointed at her. Time to get this show on the road. 

“My fellow Americans,” the President began, looking with calm assurance into the cameras, “It is with great happiness that I stand before you this afternoon.” 

~ 

**iv. Josh**

_seven years earlier_

“So,” Santos said, turning his head on the pillow to grin at Josh. “That was pretty persuasive. I have to hand it to you. I’m still not running for Congress again, though.”

The Congressman’s house was quiet. Houston seemed nice. Josh hadn’t been paying much attention to it, heading straight to Santos like he was a homing pigeon on a mission. Then he’d got sidetracked by things like the way Santos’s smile curved at the edges and the way his body moved under his clothes and the way his mouth might taste against Josh’s. 

For so long Josh had been too busy keeping the country running to let himself look at anything beyond his work, and now he’d found not only a guy whose politics he could believe in, but one who sucked cock like an angel. This was either a divinely ordained miracle of synergy, or a complication that could get very hairy very easily. Knowing Josh’s life, it was more likely the latter.

“It’s weird, but that frown looks kind of hot on you,” Santos said, and leaned in to kiss him. 

The kiss was less urgent than their earlier ones, but it still went to Josh’s head. He pushed his hand into Santos’s hair and held him still. Santos made an approving noise into his mouth, and if it had been at all possible for Josh to get hard again this quickly, he would have been. 

“Fuck,” he said, when they broke apart and Santos transferred his attention to the spot under Josh’s jaw that always made him go weak at the knees. “I didn’t come down here for this.”

“You mean you didn’t travel all the way from Washington to Houston to get some minor Congressman in bed?” Santos said, in between doing something illegally amazing to the skin behind Josh’s ear. His voice was sex itself, and Josh wrapped a hand around his bicep, holding on. “I never would’ve guessed.”

“Not that it’s not great,” Josh said, belatedly realizing the way that might have come across. 

“Well, I’m not running again, so you’ve wasted a trip.” Santos pulled back, looking down at Josh with a smile hovering on his mouth. “Maybe not wasted exactly.”

“I don’t want you to run for Congress again,” Josh said. It was very hard to find his words with Santos looking at him like that, like he was on a menu and Santos wanted to try all of him. Fuck. 

“Oh, really?” Santos asked. “Then it was a booty call after all.”

“I want you to run for President,” Josh blurted, all at once.

Santos looked down at him, his eyebrows sky-high and showing no signs of coming down any time soon. “You know,” he said finally, “I never thought I would hear someone say that while I was naked.”

“Well, now you have,” Josh said. 

“You’re not just saying this because I blew your mind. That’s not really a qualification for President.”

“I came down here to ask you to run for President,” Josh said, feeling vexed and turned-on all at once, which was a confusing combination, and he didn’t know whether he wanted Santos to stop doing that thing with his hand on Josh’s hip or if he wanted him to never stop. “Ending up in bed with you was an accident.”

“An accident,” Santos repeated. 

“If you run for President,” Josh said, “I promise it won’t happen again. I’m extremely professional.”

Santos kept looking at him for a minute. Then the corner of his mouth turned upward. “I’ll think about it,” he said. “Tomorrow. Right now I have better things to do.”

Josh couldn’t argue with that. Not when Santos put his mouth _there_.

~

The vow to stay out of bed with each other was honored more in the breach than in the observance. Their early campaign was littered with incursions, like the time they were nearly caught necking in the supply closet like teenagers, or the week Santos kept writing Josh dirty post-its that he had to hide in his pockets before the campaign staff spotted them (and then at night unpack his pockets, a stream of scrawled filth), or the many, many nights that one of them found their way to the other’s hotel room. 

The late campaign was so hectic, so dramatic and intense, that there were only scattered handjobs here and there, and one memorable blowjob the day they caught Vinick in the national tracking poll. It would have been beyond human endurance to have expected Josh to keep his hands off Santos on a day like that. Professionalism and self-preservation could only go so far.

And then it was Election Day, and Leo died, and they won the Presidency, and it was simultaneously the worst and best day of Josh’s life.

Santos came to Josh’s hotel room after it was all over. Neither of them had the energy for sex, their adrenaline highs wearing off and the lack of sleep catching up to them all at once, but they lay in bed together watching the sunrise out the hotel window. 

“Mr. President-Elect,” Josh said, trying out the way it sounded. 

Santos was long and warm against his back, a strong arm thrown proprietorially over him. “That’s not going to work,” he said, his voice an amused rumble against Josh’s neck.

“What?” Josh managed. He really was incredibly tired.

“Fuck professionalism,” Santos said. “Without Leo, I need you more than ever. And not just as Chief of Staff.”

Josh rolled so he could see Santos’s face. “The relationship between a President and his Chief of Staff is the most important in his entire administration. If things went south between us, I’d have to resign.”

“If things went south between us you’d have to resign anyway,” Santos pointed out. “Whether we were together or whether we were trying to heroically deny ourselves.”

When he put it like that, Josh could see his point. A working relationship could fracture just like an intimate one, although the latter was usually trickier. Or at least Josh had always found them to be.

“I’m not asking you to marry me, or move in, or anything like that,” Santos said. “I’m just asking for us to stop pretending this isn’t a thing that keeps happening. Because it does keep happening. And I like it.”

“I like it too,” Josh said, helpless in the face of Santos’s famous charm. 

Santos smiled. “Okay then. We’ll work out the rest later.”

Josh rested his head on Santos’s shoulder – it was exhaustion, that was it, exhaustion and victory and relief and heartbreak and grief all rolled into one. It had been a day that encompassed years, and his whole body ached as well as his heart.

Santos held him close, and kept a hand pressed against Josh’s head.

~

Six months into Matt’s presidency, Josh moved into the Residence.

He didn’t mean to. It just sort of happened. Never officially, of course – though Donna walked in on them once, and of course the Secret Service knew everything about everything, and then there was the time that Ronna discovered a dirty post-it note and squeaked loudly enough to be heard down on Pennsylvania Avenue – but somehow it just happened. 

He suspected Matt of masterminding it. Oh, at first it was just “leave a couple suits here in case of emergencies,” and then it was “oh, don’t go all the way back to your apartment, you’ll be coming in again in just a couple hours anyway”, and then one day Josh looked up and realized his favorite coffee was in the coffeepot, his muffins and bagels were by the toaster, and his slippers had been waiting by the bed this morning all ready for him. 

“Fuck,” he said, half-awake and bewildered.

His boyfriend, the Leader of the Free World, looked up from where he was petting his dog – _their_ dog, Josh realized with a jolt. Matt had picked her out at the shelter (what a good photoshoot that had been), but it was Josh who she adored most, much to Matt’s mock chagrin. “What? Are we out of milk?”

“I haven’t been home in a week,” Josh said. He’d meant to go home, he had, but there had been that thing – and then that other thing – and then the North Koreans – and then –

Matt was smirking. That was definitely a smirk. “Oh? I hadn’t noticed.”

“Shut up,” Josh said, throwing a muffin at his head. “You could have asked.”

Matt caught it (damn his reflexes), and popped a bit in his mouth. “Dear Chief of Staff, aka Joshua, aka my Josh – would you like to come live in my enormous, white, enormously white house? It’s much more convenient for me. And much less lonely than being cooped up in here all by myself.”

It was a bad idea. They were going to get caught. The country was moving forward on gay rights, much more quickly than Josh could ever have imagined during college, when he was the young kid experimenting with both sexes and confused about what that meant for him, but it wasn’t there yet. The President getting caught in a gay relationship with his Chief of Staff would be a lurid, technicolor ‘scandal’ driving the denizens of Fox News into premature apoplexies. Re-election would become a tall order.

Josh really, really should have said no.

“You don’t have to,” Matt said, trying to look nonchalant. Like Josh didn’t know every expression that crossed his face. “We can keep it casual.”

“Whatever this is, ‘casual’ is not exactly how I’d describe it,” Josh said. 

He looked around at the Residence. It felt far homier to him than his apartment did these days. His apartment was musty air, forlornly wrinkled bedsheets, decaying takeout in the fridge. The Residence was Matt, and Rosie their Newfoundland puppy, and sunrise sex before the day started, and spirited debates over dinner, and Matt’s thumb brushing the spot behind his ear that made him shudder, and slippers and muffins in the morning.

“Look,” he said, sighing, “we can’t be official. You know why as well as I do. But... unofficially, okay.”

Matt came to kiss him then, and Josh never did get to eat any breakfast that morning.

~

Seven years into Matt’s Presidency, the Supreme Court ruled for equal marriage.

Josh couldn’t quite believe it, even though he knew it was true because he had the ruling in his hands. Baker Lang, Mendoza, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. A 6-3 decision, strong and elegant. He sat at the kitchen table that night and read the majority opinion again and again.

“Afraid it’s going to change on you?” Matt said, when he came in. It had been a long day; the situation in the Crimea continued to be concerning. A President’s job was never done, even on momentous days – or perhaps especially on momentous days.

“Just happy,” Josh said. 

There were so many battles still to fight in the war for equal rights. This was just the beginning. And yet it had been so long coming, so gloriously swift when it did come, that all Josh could feel was fierce satisfaction, bone-deep joy. 

“Me too,” Matt said. “And I want to be happy forever.”

~

Two weeks later, Josh had ten words of a statement and a pounding migraine headache.

He picked up the phone and called Toby. 

~

**v. Matt**

Josh was snoring. The fact that Matt still found that endearing probably meant he was in love with him. He should really write a book. _How I Won The Presidency and Got The Guy of My Dreams_. Snappy. It worked. 

It looked like the weather was going to hold. Excellent. His mother was going to be crying enough happy tears to drown all of Washington – they didn’t need the sky to start helping. 

“Wake up, sleepyhead,” he said, poking Josh in the side. “We’re getting married today.”

“Coffee,” Josh said, indistinctly, so Matt grinned and went to start the brew.

He lost himself in agreeable daydreams about honeymooning in the Oval Office – the great thing about not being a secret anymore was that it meant he could kiss Josh _anywhere he wanted_ – and by the time Josh joined him, tousle-headed and sleepy-eyed, they had to abandon the coffee and head back to bed. 

It made him late for his first meeting, but it was his wedding day. Matt felt he was allowed.

“Ready?” Josh asked him, right before Senior Staff.

Matt smiled at him, everything in him singing with happiness. “Ready.”

~

(“Are you sure there aren’t cameras in here?” Josh asked suspiciously. 

Matt raised an eyebrow at his husband, leaning back against the Resolute desk. “I don’t give a fuck.”

“Okay then,” Josh said, and, laughing, kissed him.)

~


End file.
